“Jed thinks that I had something to do with Todd Sanderson’s murder. But I can’t figure out why he’d care or how he knew Todd. There has to be some connection between them.”
“A connection between this Jed guy and Todd Sanderson?”
“Yes.”
“The answer is obvious, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Natalie,” I said.
“Yep.”
I thought about that. “The first time I saw Natalie, she was sitting next to Jed. I even had a passing thought that maybe they were dating.”
“Well then,” Benedict said, “now it sounds like all three of you have something of a connection.”
“Meaning?”
“Carnal knowledge of Natalie.”
I didn’t like that. “You don’t know that for sure,” I protested weakly.
“May I state the obvious?”
“If you must.”
“I’ve known my share of women,” Benedict said. “At the risk of bragging, some might even call me an expert on the subject.”
I made a face. “Risk?”
“Some women are just trouble. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Trouble.”
“Right.”
“And I guess you’re going to tell me Natalie is one of these women.”
“You, Jed, Todd,” Benedict said. “No offense, but there is only one explanation for all this.”
“And that is?”
“Your Natalie is a big ol’ can of crazy.”
I frowned. We drove a little more.
“I have that guest cottage I use as an office,” Benedict said. “You can stay there until this all cools down.”
“Thank you.”
We drove a little more.
“Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“We always fall harder for the crazy ones,” Benedict said. “That’s our problem as men. We all claim we hate the drama, but we don’t.”
“That’s deep, Benedict.”
“Can I ask you one more thing?”
“Sure.”
I thought I saw his grip tighten on the wheel. “How did you happen to see Todd’s obituary?”
I turned to face him. “What?”
“His obituary. How did you see it?”
I wondered if the confusion was showing on my face. “It was on the front page of the college website. What exactly are you trying to ask?”
“Nothing. I was just wondering, that’s all.”
“I told you about it in my office-and you encouraged me to go down to the funeral, remember?”
“I do,” Benedict said. “And now I’m encouraging you to let this go.”
I didn’t reply. We drove for a while in silence. Benedict interrupted it.
“One other thing that’s bothering me,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“How do you think the police found you at Natalie’s sister’s house?”
I had wondered the same thing, but now I realized the answer was obvious. “Shanta.”
“She knew where you were?”
I explained about my calling her and my stupidity in keeping the disposable phone. If the police can track you by your phone, it stood to reason that if they knew the number (which would have popped up on Shanta’s caller ID), they could track you by a disposable phone too. I still had it in my pocket and debated chucking it out the window. No need. The cops weren’t the ones I was worried about anymore.
After President Tripp requested my departure, I had packed a suitcase and my laptop and stored them in my office at Clark House. I wondered whether someone might be, I don’t know, staking out my campus house or that office. It seemed like overkill, but what the heck. Benedict had the idea of having us park far away. We looked to see if there was anything suspicious. There wasn’t.
“We can send a student in to pick up your stuff,” he said.
I shook my head. “I already got one student hurt in this.”
“There’s no risk here.”
“Still.”
Clark House was closed. I carefully entered via the back entrance. I grabbed my stuff and hurried back toward Benedict’s car. No one shot me. Score one for the good guys. Benedict drove to the back of his property and dropped me off at the guest cottage.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I got a bunch of papers to grade. You’ll be all right?”
“Sure.”
“You should see a doctor about your head.”
I did have a residual headache. If it was from some kind of concussion, exhaustion, stress, or some combination of those, I had no idea. Either way I didn’t think a doctor could help. I thanked Benedict again and settled into the room. I took out my laptop and set it up on the desk.
It was time, I thought, to do some cyber-sleuthing.
You may wonder what qualifies me to be a top-notch investigator or how I would know how to cyber-sleuth. I’m not and I don’t. But I know how to type stuff in a Google search field. That was what I started to do now.
First, I searched for a date: May 24, six years ago.
That had been the date on the surveillance photograph the NYPD had shown me. It stood to reason that whatever had happened that day, well, it was probably a crime. It might have been reported in the news. Was that a long shot? I guess. But it could be a start.
When I hit the return button, a bunch of hits about a tornado in Kansas popped up first. I would need to narrow this down. I added “NYC” into the search field and hit the return button again. The first story told me that the New York Rangers had lost to the Buffalo Sabres 2 to 1. Second link: the New York Mets beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 5 to 3. Man, we are a sports-obsessed society.
I finally located a site that ran daily New York newspapers and their archives. Over the past two weeks, the front pages of many newspapers were discussing the brazen string of bank robberies in New York City. They hit at night and left no clue and had earned the nickname “the Invisibles.” Catchy. Then I hit the link for the archives for May 24 six years ago and started cyber-paging through the metro sections.
Top stories for that day: An armed man attacked the French consulate. Police took down a heroin ring operated by a Ukrainian gang. A cop named Jordan Smith accused of rape was having his day in court. A house fire in Staten Island had been deemed suspicious. A hedge fund manager from Solem Hamilton had been indicted in some kind of Ponzi scheme. A state comptroller was accused of ethics violations.
This didn’t help. Or maybe it did. Maybe Natalie had been part of the Ukrainian gang. Maybe she knew the hedge fund manager-the surveillance photo looked like the lobby of an office building-or the state comptroller. Where was I on that day six years ago? May 24. School would have been coming to a close. In fact, classes would probably be over right around then.
Six years ago.
My life had been in turmoil, as Benedict had recently reminded me at the Library Bar. My father had died of a heart attack a month earlier. My thesis wasn’t going well. May 24. That would have been right around the time Professor Trainor had thrown his graduation party with the underage drinking. I had wanted him seriously censured, putting a bit of tension between Professor Hume and myself.
But my life wasn’t the point here. Natalie’s was.
The surveillance photograph had been taken May 24. I thought about that for a moment. Suppose there had been some kind of crime or incident on May 24. Okay, right, that was certainly the possibility I had been going on, but now I was following through on the thought. If the incident took place on May 24, when would the papers report it?
May 25, not May 24.
This was not a brilliant insight, but it did make some sense. I found the papers for May 25 and again searched the metro sections. Top stories: Local philanthropist Archer Minor was gunned down. A fire in Chelsea kills two. An unarmed teen was shot by police. Man kills his ex-wife. High school principal arrested for embezzling school funds.
This was a waste of time.
I closed my eyes and rubbed them. Giving up sounded really good right now. I could lie down and close my eyes. I could keep my promise and honor the wishes, it seemed, of the woman I thought was my true love. Of course, as Benedict had pointed out, maybe Todd and Jed thought that Natalie was their true love. A flush of something primordial-let’s call it jealousy-whooshed through me.